Over $16 billion in losses reported to FBI in 2024 tied to computer crime

The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) on Wednesday said it had received nearly 860,000 complaints in the last year and recorded a “staggering” $16.6 billion in losses to businesses and individuals, the highest for both figures since the hub’s establishment in 2000.

Fraud represented the bulk of reported losses in 2024 while ransomware was again the most prevalent threat to critical infrastructure, with complaints rising 9 percent from 2023, and making up almost half of the total 3,165 reported crimes, according to the center’s annual report. Overall, the total number of reports tallied by IC3 rose 33 percent.

“These rising losses are even more concerning because last year, the FBI took significant actions to make it harder, and more costly, for malicious actors to succeed,” wrote Chad Yarbrough, FBI operations director for criminal and cyber.

In particular, he highlighted the bureau’s work against the notorious LockBit ransomware gang as well as the FBI’s efforts to offer up thousands of decryption keys to victims of ransomware, avoiding over $800 million in payments since 2022.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Cynthia Kaiser, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, described the $16.6 billion figure as "absolutely an underreported number” as not all victims contact law enforcement.

She cautioned that it’s “hard to have numbers tell the full story of what might be occurring across the cyber criminal ecosystem” but attributed the two increases to the “virtualization of everything in our lives,” which has increased the opportunity for attacks, and more people knowing to contact the FBI.

“It depends on the reporting, and the more reports we get in, the better, not just data, but the better we're able to pull all of these incidents together, identify the pattern, figure out who's behind them, and then bring them to justice,” Kaiser said.

Chris Delgado, chief of the FBI’s financial crime section, emphasized fraud schemes emanating from Ghana and India, where a range of cyber-enabled crimes are being facilitated through call centers.

He added that fraud is considered a “national threat priority” within the FBI, “which means we have surged resources this fiscal year to that threat.” He declined to provide specifics.

The annual report found the most common kinds of victim reports to the FBI were phishing and its variants at 193,407; extortion at 86,415; personal data breach at 64,882; non-payment at 49,572; and investment schemes at 47,919.